“Had a few questions for you,” Franny said. They’d sat down in the living room. She, Teddy, and Joshua sat on the couch. Detective Franny was in the chair. The person he was with stood at the edge of the room. He’d identified himself as Detective Rodriguez. Older, dark-skinned. Hadn’t said much beyond a greeting yet.
“Sure,” Karen said. “About what?”
“Actually, I was speaking to Joshua.” Franny turned toward him. “Can you answer a few questions for us?”
Karen looked over at Joshua. He slowly nodded, eyes wide, mouth slightly open.
“There was a news article from a few days ago about a dead body that was found,” Franny said. “Did you happen to see the article?”
“No,” Joshua said.
“A friend didn’t mention it to you, anything like that?”
Joshua shook his head.
“The body was found down in Missouri, washed up on the banks of the Mississippi. The local police identified him as someone from around here and alerted us. William Scanlon. That name ring a bell?”
“No,” Joshua said, his voice cracking.
Franny looked at her and Teddy. “Either of you recognize the name?”
They shook their heads. Karen felt like her heart was going to explode from her chest.
“The case was a weird one,” Franny said. “Best as we can tell, he was missing for about a week. The guy didn’t have many friends. No job at the moment. Hardly anyone even noticed he was missing.”
Franny opened a notebook and looked inside.
“The case is being viewed as a homicide,” he said. “Not an accidental drowning. No water in his lungs, so he was dead before he was thrown in the river. Plus, he had a number of suspicious injuries. One of his knees was pretty busted up. Traumatic injury to the side of his head.”
“Why are you asking us about him?” Karen said. She had no idea why she was playing dumb. Franny was clearly here for a reason. He knew something.
“A few reasons,” Franny said. “Last week, we got a call about him. Turns out Mr. Scanlon was a bit of a hothead, had some trouble with the law in the past, and had been getting anger-management treatment for a few years. His psychiatrist called and told us that Scanlon hadn’t shown up to his weekly appointment. The shrink was worried. We looked into his disappearance but nothing came of our search.
“A couple days passed, and we learned why we couldn’t find him: he was floating in the Mississippi. Dead as a doornail. After his body washed up onshore in Missouri, the local police found something interesting. There was a camera and some film in the pocket of his coat. His shrink told us he liked taking photos in his free time—sounds like the hobby calmed him, helped him with his anger. Now, the camera was ruined from the water, but the film was stored in a waterproof case. It survived, and we developed the photos.”
Karen’s stomach rose. She was going to be sick. She was sure of it.
“Most of the photos were of trees and wildlife. A bunch of pictures taken in some sort of forest. We did some searching around, some comparisons, and we think the photos were taken in Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area. Ever been?”
His eyes were locked on Joshua. Joshua stared down at the ground, unblinking. Looked like he was frozen.
“A few times,” Joshua said.
“Recently?”
“I don’t know. Like a month or two ago.”
Franny reached into his briefcase and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph. He set it on the coffee table.
“This is one of the photos we recovered.”
It was a wide shot of the sun setting in the distance behind a group of pine trees. There was a cluster of bushes to the left of the trees. Nothing much stood out about the photograph—
“Look in the lower left corner.”
Karen did. There was a small, blurry white mark about half an inch wide.
“Can you see what that is?” Franny asked.
No one responded.
“We had our guys tinker around with the photo. Enlarge it. Sharpen it. And this is what it looks like.”
Franny set another picture on the coffee table. It was a blown-up shot of the white dot. The photo was blurry but clear enough for Karen to see it was of a car.
The six digits on the car’s license plate were barely visible. They were the six digits of Joshua’s license plate.
“That’s your car, right?” Franny said.
Joshua nodded. Karen was having difficulty breathing.
“So your car was out there, the night this guy was,” Franny said. “Did you happen to see him?”
“No,” Joshua said.
“Sure?”
Joshua shook his head.
“I started doing some thinking,” Franny said. “I remembered your car. I noticed the windshield when I was here. It was bashed in. The grille was a little busted up, too. What caused that?”
“My friend knocked over a shelf. The shelf fell onto it.”
“This friend have a name?”
Joshua gave them Aaron’s name. The detective standing on the edge of the room, Rodriguez, wrote down the name in his notebook.
“Can I take a look at the car?” Franny asked.
Joshua glanced at Karen. Back at Franny. He nodded.
They all stood up and walked out to the garage.
Joshua was certain he was going to collapse as he walked over to the garage. This was going to be it. The end.
In the garage, Detective Rodriguez looked at the spiderweb crack in the windshield. He leaned in close.
Joshua held his breath. There’d been some blood on the windshield the night of the accident. He’d wiped as much as he could away with the sleeve of his coat, then poured a bottle of water over the windshield to wash away the remaining blood.
Had he gotten all of it? He had no idea. He’d been in such a hurry. Rushed and hasty. He’d meant to clean it again to make sure there was nothing left, but so much had happened and he hadn’t gotten around to it.
Franny stood to the side, staring at them. Not even attempting to hide the fact that he was looking at them.
Joshua looked at his dad and mom. They stared straight ahead, focused on Detective Rodriguez as he examined the windshield.
“Looks like something here,” Rodriguez said.
Franny walked over. Rodriguez pointed at an area next to the crack in the windshield. There was a small, barely visible red smudge on the glass.
“Look like blood to you?”
Franny nodded. “It does.”
Franny turned to Joshua. “Is that what it is? Blood?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Which is it? No? Or you don’t know?”
“I don’t know.” But of course he knew. It was blood. No doubt about it. The police would do testing, link it to the dead man, and there’d be no talking his way out of it. There was nothing he could say to save himself.
“You don’t have to play dumb,” Franny said. “I’ve seen enough blood in my career to know what it looks like. And that right there is blood. So, what is going on here? Earlier, Amber told us that the two of you were standing over a dead body in the forest when she and Ross arrived. Not out looking at stars. We thought she was crazy. But now I’m starting to wonder.”
Joshua looked at his mom, his dad. He stared down at the ground.
“Look, the pictures prove that this Scanlon guy was out in Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area right before he died,” Franny said. “You were, too—at least, your car was. And when we test this blood, we’ll find out if it belongs to Scanlon or not. So if you’re hiding something, the smart thing to do is to be honest.”
It was time to confess. Time to do what he should’ve done from the start. Come clean. Admit to everything and deal with the consequences. He would—
“I have something to tell you.”
His dad’s voice. Joshua looked over at him. Teddy was staring at the two detectives, his expression solemn and serious.
“What is it?” Franny said.
“A confession,” Teddy said. “I was out there that night. I was driving Joshua’s car. And the man whose body you found . . . I’m the one who killed him.”
Karen stared at Teddy, barely able to believe what she’d just heard.
“What are you talking about?” Franny said.
“Joshua and I, we were out in the forest a week ago,” Teddy said, speaking slowly. “Late at night. I was driving his car and hit a man. Injured him. When we went over to check on the guy, he was furious. He was big, much stronger than either of us. All of a sudden, he went crazy, pushing and shoving us. At one point, he had Joshua pinned to the ground. I thought he was going to seriously hurt him, so I grabbed a rock. Hit him in the head with it. Everything was so frantic. It happened in an instant. Right after I hit him, he stopped moving. I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“You didn’t report this?”
“I was worried. I dumped the body in the river. Told my son to keep it a secret. It was a mistake. That’s all I’ll say.”
Karen listened to it all, stunned, in total shock. There was a part of her that wanted to tell the police that Teddy was lying. Just come clean and tell the truth. But she couldn’t. This was how it was going to end. With Teddy ending it for good. Making a sacrifice for Joshua.
“We’ll need to bring you down to the station and get your full statement,” Franny said.
Teddy nodded. “That’s fine.”
So much happened over the next few days that it was difficult to keep track of it all.
Teddy gave his statement and took the blame for everything that had happened. The story was heavily covered in the news. Karen had so many questions for him, so many things she wanted to say, but he was locked up in jail and there was no way to talk to him without the conversation being recorded. She wanted to ask him why he’d done it. Wanted to ask him what he’d been thinking. And, she supposed, she wanted to thank him, too. Thank him for sacrificing himself for their son.
The last she’d heard, it sounded as though he might get off with only a few years. It wasn’t really the crime he’d get in trouble for. It was the cover-up.
Teddy had insisted that he’d pressured Joshua into not reporting the crime. Even so, Joshua would face some sort of punishment. He hadn’t reported the car accident or the dead body. But his punishment would be nowhere near as severe as Teddy’s. His lawyer seemed confident he could keep him out of jail.
In the meantime, Joshua was allowed to return home. He seemed so down. He truly loved his dad, and she could tell his absence pained him deeply. Karen talked a lot with Joshua in the days that followed. They cried a lot, too. Joshua told her he wasn’t going to Clemson, that he didn’t want to be so far from home with everything going on. She said to think about it, give it some time, but she could tell his mind was made up. He couldn’t leave.
The days kept passing, but even so, she couldn’t begin to move past everything that had happened. Mostly because so much had taken place in their house. Every single day was a reminder of it all. When she slept at night, it was in the same room Amber had almost died in. When they grabbed something from the storage room, it was the same room where they had been tied up and nearly lost their lives. Even seeing Joshua’s car in the garage was a reminder of the accident that had started everything.
Reminders everywhere. Every feeling still lingered.
She held out hope that maybe all she needed was time. She’d never be able to forget about everything, but she hoped that, with time, she might be able to start to move on. Maybe eventually details would be difficult to remember and her sadness would start to disappear.
Time. That was all she needed. That was all Joshua needed, too. She hoped so, at least. There was no magic potion or cure. Just time.
With the passing of time, she hoped they could both eventually start to move on.
They might not get a happy ending, but they would at least get an ending.
And maybe that was all they could hope for.